


Foretaste

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 12:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21446014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: Yaz is reunited with someone she hasn't met yet.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Foretaste

**Author's Note:**

> From an [Ersatz Genremixer](http://www.seasip.info/Misc/genremixer.html) prompt by [thisbluespirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit):
>
>>   
Yasmin Khan / Thirteenth Doctor - Reunited & pre-canon  


It was not turning out to be anything like the best day of Yaz's career. But then, she hadn't expected it to. Every spare officer, even the rawest of probationers, had been swept up in a search for a couple of missing children — and the likelihood, given how long they'd been missing, must be that they wouldn't be found alive. 

She'd been sent to make investigations on Century Street, an industrial estate where anonymous modern workshops mingled with tumbledown brick and corrugated iron structures from past eras. Everything had been obviously innocent and straightforward, until she'd come to the Takmi Imports site. 

The main building was a single-storey brick structure with a rusty iron roof. In front was a yard, with weeds growing through cracks in the concrete. To the rear, Yaz discovered as she walked around the building, was another strip of concrete, surrounded by smaller brick sheds. 

With its windows and doors boarded up, the main building was obviously no longer in use. Faded notices nailed to the boards, or crudely painted onto the woodwork, proclaimed that this was a dangerous structure, not to be entered. But the sheet of plywood over the back door was loose to Yaz's touch. If she could get in, so could the lost children; it was plainly her duty to investigate. 

Inside, it was dark, the boarded windows admitting not the slightest glimmer of light, and the heat was oppressive. Worse was the stink of decay that hit Yaz almost like a physical blow; it took all her self-control to keep her breakfast down. As she took a couple of hesitant steps forward, the floor felt alternately slippery and sticky, and her boots made obscene squelching noises. 

Yaz pulled her torch from her belt, and tried to get a sense of where she was. The building seemed to have been laid out something like a supermarket, with rows of neatly-stacked shelves. Now the shelves were overflowing with slime and decay; whatever had been on them — imported food, she supposed — had rotted, disintegrated, become a place where maggots and rats feasted. 

Nauseating though it was, Yaz told herself, there might be still worse things here. And it was her duty to make sure there weren't. One step at a time, picking her way through piles of organic matter rotted beyond recognition, she made her way along the main aisle of the warehouse. It felt as if she was exploring the decaying ribcage of some long-dead creature; the shelving units seemed to be taking on the shapes of bones, inadequately covered by corrupting flesh. She was sweating freely by the time she reached the next-to-last row of shelves— 

Yaz would have sworn that she was alone in the warehouse. If anybody else had been there, she could hardly have missed hearing them, or seeing whatever light they were using. Consequently, when she rounded the corner and nearly collided with a woman in a duffel coat, she had to admit that it threw her. She recoiled, slipped in something it was best not to think about, and had to clutch at whatever was nearest for support. It turned out to be a metal shelf, encrusted with rust and who knew what else. She'd dropped her torch in her struggle for balance; it had landed some way away, pointing away from them so that all Yaz could make out of the other woman was a silhouette. 

"Yaz!" the woman said. She spoke with a soft Yorkshire accent. "Has it been a long time? It has for me." 

"Who— How—" Yaz managed to steady herself, and think of the proper words. "Ma'am, might I ask what you're doing here?" 

"You don't know me, do you?" the woman said. "Right. This could be tricky, then." 

"It doesn't have to be." Yaz wiped her forehead. "I just need you to tell me a few things." She took a deep breath, and regretted it almost immediately in the fetid atmosphere of the warehouse. "I'm a police officer, ma'am." 

"I know." 

"Right." Yaz tried to get a grip on herself. "What's your name?" 

"Jane S— Jane Jones." 

_Obviously not her real name,_ Yaz thought. "And what are you doing here?" 

"Cleaning up. I'm the new cleaner." There was an element of perkiness creeping into the woman's tone, as if she was beginning to find the situation amusing. "Start on Monday. Thought I'd look round and see what I'd let myself in for." 

Yaz shook her head. "That won't do, ma'am. If you're not going to be honest with me, maybe I'd better take you back to the station." 

"Have to remember to bring a fire hose the next time I come here," the woman said, Yaz's last remark having apparently gone straight past her. "Or divert a river through the place. But enough about me. What's an up-and-coming police officer like you doing in a place like this?" 

"I'm pursuing enquiries into the whereabouts of two children, ma'am. Harry and Ella Fuller." Instinctively, Yaz reached for the photograph she'd been given, before realising that in this darkness there'd be no point in showing it. "If you have any information—" 

Abruptly, Yaz broke off. Though she could have sworn that the woman wasn't moving, it felt as if something had brushed against her calf. A rat? No, whatever it was, it was bigger than a rat, and it felt cold and clammy through her trousers. A new smell was forcing its way through the overpowering stink: another odour of decay, but this one was of dank cellars, corruption that had been sealed away for years and decades, clawing its way past disintegrating locks and bars... 

She hardly noticed the other woman's "Sorry about this, Yaz," or the light tap on her forehead. 

~ ~ ~

Had she been required to, Yaz would have found it very difficult to give any account of the next couple of minutes. At the end of them, she was outside the back entrance of the warehouse, on hands and knees, sucking in mouthfuls of fresh air; but she had no way of explaining how she'd come to be there. It wasn't as if she couldn't remember, but that there were too many memories and none of them fitted together. She'd turned and run— no, the woman had carried Yaz out in her arms— or over her shoulder— or had taken her arm and marched her out— had she even been there in the first place? 

Well, Yaz thought it was safe to assume the woman had been there, at least. Because while she'd been on the ground, trying to pull herself together, someone had told her to try the third shed on the right. But when she'd looked round, there was nobody there. 

Once she'd got her breath back and staggered to her feet, her sweat-soaked shirt clinging uncomfortably to her back, she explored each shed in turn. The door of the third seemed to be locked; if it hadn't been for her encounter in the warehouse, she might have decided it was, and left it there. Instead, she persevered, struggling with the rusty lock, kicking at the frame until the door flew open. Lying in a corner were what looked almost like two bundles of grimy rags, though Yaz didn't need her photograph to recognise them. She sent a brief, urgent radio message, then knelt beside Harry and Ella, willing them to survive until help arrived. 

Yaz didn't have a chance to think any more about her encounter in the warehouse until much later that day. Even after the children had been safely given over to medical supervision, the police had determined how they had found their way into the shed and then become trapped, and the press had been given a brief account of events, Yaz had still had to write her own report, stagger home, and relate such details to her family as she could. She was almost asleep in bed before she had a chance to think of the woman she'd met, and it seemed already to be the stuff of dreams, not waking life. Try as she might, she couldn't picture the woman, or even try to remember her voice. 

The following day, Yaz found the newspaper's account of events inaccurate in almost every particular — not least, that the children had been found by one 'Constable Jasmine Kane'. Almost as a postscript, the article mentioned that the warehouse, already condemned as a dangerous structure, had somehow caught fire almost as soon as the last police presence had left; the building had been gutted before the blaze could be brought under control, but there were no reports of any casualties. 

Short as Yaz's time in the police had been, she already knew that not every mystery got solved. In this case, with whatever had been in the warehouse consigned to the flames, it wasn't worth investigating, or even mentioning the matter to her superiors. 

She did wonder if she'd know the woman if she met her again, though. She was the one who'd known — how? — where the children had been trapped. Yaz thought it would be nice to thank her, one day.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Foretaste](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011048) by [muggle95](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95)


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